Confronting New Madrid (Part 1): In the winter of 1811-12, the New Madrid fault in southern Missouri triggered a series of earthquakes in so powerful they altered the course of the Mississippi River and rang church bells as far away as Philadelphia... and we still don't fully understand why. A similar quake today is estimated to be the costliest disaster in US History.
Confronting New Madrid (Part 2): As dangerous as the threat of "the big one" might be, however, the real disaster is us. [more inside]
posted by absalom
on Jul 16, 2015 -
39 comments

An earthquake with a magnitude of 7.8 has hit Nepal, killing over 1,000 people. The epicenter was just outside Kathmandu, but the effects have been felt as far away as Tibet, Bangladesh, and India. Regular updates at The Guardian.
posted by lunasol
on Apr 25, 2015 -
82 comments

An interactive map of geologic doom from the Oregon Department of Geology and Mineral Industries. You can model which hazards are most likely to affect your (Oregon) neighborhood, from landslides, tsunamis, and the ever-ominous Cascadian Subduction earthquake.
posted by janell
on Feb 16, 2015 -
13 comments

Based on Akira Kurosawa's experience with the Great Kanto Earthquake - as written in his "Something Like an Autobiography" -, Tokyo 1923 immerses the player in the midst of a catastrophe and tries to bring up questions about solidarity, desperation and moving on after a personal or global tragedy.

Dispatch from Haiti: Quiet Before The Storm "For the past five years, I've traveled annually to Haiti. When I first went there as a reporter I ended up staying through an earthquake, a cholera outbreak (and the protests it inspired), and a fraudulent election (plus more protests) over the following two years. I just made another trip there to consult on a research project.
And when I come back to the States, here's what people always ask me:
How are people doing down there? Are things getting any better?"
posted by capnsue
on Mar 27, 2014 -
31 comments

What Neil deGrasse Tyson is to astrophysics, Lucy Jones is to seismology.
"The last time there was a large seismic event on the fault that can do us the most harm, the San Andreas, in 1857, Los Angeles had about 4,000 residents. “We really weren’t worried about keeping a complex social structure in place,” Jones said. But as we get bigger and more complex, we increase our vulnerability."
Jones presented her talk, “Imagine America Without Los Angeles” to the American Geophysical Union Conference in San Francisco in 2013.
While today is the 20th anniversary of the Northridge quake, we still haven't quite figured out what to do to mitigate the effects of the BIG ONE to come. [more inside]
posted by Sophie1
on Jan 17, 2014 -
68 comments

Roger Craig, Giants manager: I was in my office when the walls started shaking. I heard Don Robinson hollering, "Earthquake! Earthquake!" I told everybody to run out to the parking lot. It was asphalt and it was just rolling. -- Grantland's oral history of the Loma Prieta earthquake and the 1989 World Series
posted by Chrysostom
on Oct 23, 2013 -
40 comments

An earthquake in Balochistan (also spelled Baluchistan), a mountainous province of Pakistan, has killed many people and reportedly flattened many houses in Awaran, the worst-affected district. The force of the earthquake raised the sea bed near the port of Gwadar, creating a new island. Early estimates of casualties are notoriously inaccurate, but a preliminary report by Max Wyss of WAPMERR suggests there will be several thousand deaths.
posted by Joe in Australia
on Sep 24, 2013 -
17 comments

Massive earthquakes in Chile and Japan have been found to cause the dramatic increase in violent quakes around fracking's largely unregulated wastewater injection wells observed in the Midwest in the past two years, where injected water acts as a lubricant for geological faults that were previously thought to be "dead" or stable for millions of years.
posted by Blazecock Pileon
on Sep 1, 2013 -
12 comments

Dawn reports that the largest earthquake to hit Iran in 40 years struck the Balochistan region along the Iran-Pakistan border. At least 45 people are dead, but that figure is expected to rise. Earthquaketrack says it was 7.8 on the Richter scale. At emptywheel, Jim White notes that two smaller Iranian earthquakes last year killed over 300 people.
posted by Area Man
on Apr 16, 2013 -
26 comments

Those who may have seen articles such as this Discover Magazine article, may want to know more about the Cascadia fault and the possibility of a Fukushima type earthquake [previously: here].
Here is the best summary of the science that led to the discovery of the 1700 earthquake and the history of earlier quakes. Of particular interest is a beautiful piece of data display in Figure 9 that shows the spacing in time and extent of earthquakes over the last 10,000 years based on evidence of tsunamis produced by the quakes.
Finally, here is a great pieces on Surviving a Tsunami should the need arise.
posted by BillW
on Feb 1, 2013 -
17 comments

Six natural disaster experts and one government official were sentenced today to six years in jail for not having warned the populace of the major earthquake that hit L'Aquila, Italy in April of 2009 (previously). [more inside]
posted by progosk
on Oct 22, 2012 -
46 comments

“If I had depended on Yéle,” said Diaoly Estimé, whose orphanage features a wall painting of Mr. Jean and his wife, “these kids would all be dead by now.” (SLNYT)
posted by Nomyte
on Oct 12, 2012 -
14 comments

On February 22, [2011], 13 [bus passengers] were crushed by an unreinforced brick building at 603-13 Colombo St. I broke half a dozen bones or so, severed a tendon, spent two months in hospital and six months off work. And I was lucky. Twelve people died. I did not know them, but they forever travel with me.

On Monday, Google released Memories for the Future, a website that allows you to "... walk the scarred coastline [after the Japanese tsunami] virtually". "... it is possible to see the full extent of the damage by finding an image in Street View and then clicking the “Before” and “After” links at the top to see how the earthquake and tsunami impacted that area." The Japan Real Time blog has a good introduction and writeup.
posted by woodblock100
on Dec 13, 2011 -
9 comments

Ross Becker's photographs of Christchurch. The central business district reopens this weekend for the first time since the earthquake (Previously: 1, 2, 3) on February 22, 2011. [more inside]
posted by doublehappy
on Oct 26, 2011 -
3 comments

This is how it will happen.Let’s pick a day: June 22, 2012. It’s a gorgeous Friday afternoon in the Pacific Northwest, 75 degrees and sunny. It’s been raining for weeks, and in Seattle the freeways are jammed with people fleeing the city to ­enjoy the rare sunshine. Same story in Portland. Out on the coast, the beach towns are thrumming with tourists.
How a monster earthquake and resulting tsunami would affect the coast and cities of the Pacific NW.
posted by jontyjago
on Aug 26, 2011 -
152 comments

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